Design. Play. Participate

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

So this is what’s happening in our Creative Data world next week. The Butterfly Effect project is reaching its colourful culmination at The Forum in Norwich, with an exhibition of 10 Norfolk Primary Schools’ creative work.

At the beginning of this year bespoke educations packs and activities, that we designed, were delivered to each of these ten schools situated in the Broadland area. The children started the project by looking at maps of their area and were asked questions such as “Where are the Broads?”, “What do people do there?” and “How have they changed over time?”

Pupils were then asked to imagine what their local landscape might look like in the future and what role climate change might play. The children responded with a variety of vibrant visions, including drawings, sculptures, quilts and animations. Their beautiful work shows how young people imagine their future landscapes.

The subject of water also played a big part in the project with a several activities dedicated to its importance, both locally and globally. Each school took on a weekly water challenge to do one thing per week to use water more efficiently. Challenges included brushing teeth with half a cup of water, collecting rainwater for watering the garden, and having a shower instead of a bath.

This exhibition is the conclusion of our 3 year pilot project for Creative Data about the future of The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads. Its purpose was to explore how designers and scientists can work together to communicate valuable local data and research to the public in new and exciting ways.

In the last few weeks we have done four workshops at Happisburgh primary school, Ellingham primary school, Hopton primary school and Thurlton primary school which have all gone brilliantly. In January we’ll be doing workshops with Ludham Primary, Rockland St Mary primary, Kinsale Junior School, Coltishall primary, and Ormesby Junior School. Finally, in February we’ll deliver our final workshop to the project’s 10th school Greenacre primary in Great Yarmouth.

In these workshops we are introducing our bespoke education packs to individual classes, and sometimes the whole of the Key Stage 2 year groups, with a series of activities to get children thinking about what The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads are, how they came to be, and what they are used for.

There have been some great conversations in all directions, between us and the children, between teachers and children, between us and teachers, and of course, amongst the children themselves.

They were very enthusiastic about discovering where they were located on the map. For some of them The Broads were very familiar, being in their back yards so to speak, and for others The Broads were a whole new concept, even though they live and go to school in the Broadland area.

At Hopton we had ninety kids take part. Yes that’s right, 90! They are taking an interesting approach to the project, with teacher Beth Palmer running a lunchtime club for pupils who are interested in learning more about The Broads. It’s wonderful to see all the different approaches by the various schools.

Anna Clayton has been a brilliant assistant, recording conversations with the kid and commanding the workshops like a pro. She is very good at listening and drawing conversation out of even the shyest young ones.

We have seen an excellent selection of drawings from pupils. This was clearly their favourite part of the workshop and they would have drawn boats, butterflies and windmills all day, if we’d let them.

We’re very much looking forward to coming back in a few months time to see how everyone has got on with The Butterfly Effect project and we’re excited to be able to take their work to Norwich for a public exhibition. Details to be announced soon.

Good luck to all the schools in the project. We hope you enjoy your time with The Butterfly Effect and enjoy finding new connections with your local landscape.

We’ve been working very hard here at Creative Data over the last few months to get our first education project off the ground. We’re very excited to say that last week we launched The Butterfly Effect Schools Project at an INSET Day for 10 teachers from participating schools in Norfolk.

This schools project is the culmination of 2 years work following The Butterfly Effect exhibition at The Forum in Norwich in 2009. We had always planned to follow the design installation with a dissemination project which allowed the community to take ownership of the theme of The Future of The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, but due to some inevitable funding struggles it took longer to launch that we imagined.

Last Monday Lucy Rose, originator of the Butterfly Effect children’s workshop at The Forum, and project director Leonora Oppenheim hosted the INSET day, in conjunction with Anglian Water. We introduced the history of the project and handed over our beautiful bespoke education packs. We were very pleased that Paul Munday could join us to present his PhD work on future land use in The Broads. His was the scientific research which we based the map installation on, so it’s important to keep that connection to the original project alive.

Anglian Water kindly hosted us in a wonderfully grand room at the Heigham Waterworks site in Norwich. The size of the room meant we were able to spread out our map sections of The Broads on the floor for our icebreaker.

We used the map as a tool to get teachers from each school to introduce themselves and where they are from. Each stood on their section of the map that they took away with them at the end of the day with their Box of Goodies. We’re looking forward to bringing all the sections back together after the kids have got their hands on them for the schools exhibition next year, which will show off all the schools’ creative output from this project.

Lucy Rose and project researcher Anna Clayton led the sessions, introducing the workshop activities and getting our teachers to try some of them out. This included working in pairs and groups to discuss the various conflicting factors that are important to the future of The Broads.

Lucy even got them on the floor doing an activity!

Marcia Davies and Ellie Pluck from Anglian Water presented to the group about water use, describing the main problems the company faces in cleaning water, and different simple ways of using water more efficiently.

We worked very hard on our education packs for the teachers and we were delighted with the final look and quality of them. Thanks must go to Elio Studio design assistant Hannah Thompson whose beautiful graphic work is spread through the education pack. She also documented the INSET day with these excellent photographs and a short film – coming soon! That’s Hannah below, holding our lovely education booklet.

The response from the teachers was universally positive and we are starting to give the introductory workshops in schools with children next week. Here are just some of the lovely feedback comments we received at the end of the INSET day:

Excited at the prospect of being part of an environmental project with a really meaningful outcome.

Sounds like a fantastic way to get children and families discussing these important local/national issues.

Very enthusiastic to start ‘project’ I think children will really enjoy the learning.

The butterfly effect is the perfect way to stimulate discussion about the future of the Broadland, and ensure it is cared for by the next generation.

The project reflects the way we like to work in school and incorporates a real life purpose.

Inspiring ideas which I’m sure we’ll have great fun with at school.

Watch this space to follow the project’s progress. We will keeping in touch with each school and posting blogs on their activities throughout the process.

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